The two men had doubtless felt frightened. However, they now approached. Ducat was short, pale, and fat, with scanty hair; and Cabasse, tall and bony, with a dark face and a long nose like a knife-blade. Meantime Maurice, who had been scrutinising the sergeant with surprise, ended by asking him, 'Aren't you Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly?'
And when the sergeant, looking rather alarmed, had with some hesitation answered affirmatively, the young fellow instinctively fell back, for this man, Sambuc, had the reputation of being a terrible rogue, the true scion of a family of woodcutters, who had turned out very badly. The father, a drunkard, had been found one evening on the verge of a wood, with his throat cut; the mother and daughter, both thieves and beggars, had disappeared, but were doubtless leading a shameful life. Guillaume, the Franc-tireur, had been a smuggler and poacher in time of peace; and only one of this family of wolves had grown into an honest man—Prosper, the Chasseur d'Afrique, who, before becoming a soldier, had hired himself out as a farm hand in his hatred of forest life.
'I saw your brother at Rheims and Vouziers,' resumed Maurice. 'He was all right.'
Sambuc made no answer to this, but to hasten matters exclaimed: 'Take me to the general. Tell him that some Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet woods have something important to communicate to him.'
While they were returning to the camp Maurice began thinking of these Francs-tireurs, these free companies on whom so many hopes had been founded, but who were already, on all sides, giving so much cause for complaint. It had been expected that they would carry on a war of ambushes, await the enemy behind the hedges, harass him, shoot down his sentries, and hold the woods so that, not a Prussian would ever leave them alive. But, to tell the truth, they were becoming the terror of the peasants, whom they defended inefficiently, and whose fields they laid waste. In their hatred of the regular military service, all the waifs and strays of society hastened to join these corps, delighted to escape discipline and to roam the country like merry bandits, sleeping and tippling wheresoever chance led them. Some of these companies were indeed composed of really execrable elements.
'Here, Cabasse! Here, Ducat!' repeated Sambuc, turning round at each step he took; 'make haste, you laggards!'
Maurice instinctively divined that both these men must be terrible rascals. Cabasse, the tall, bony fellow, had been born at Toulon, and after serving as a waiter in a café at Marseilles, had turned up at Sedan as commission agent for a firm of the South of France. He had narrowly escaped the clutches of the law in connection with some story of theft, the real facts of which were not known. Ducat, his short, fat comrade, had been a process-server at Blainville, but had been compelled to sell his office owing to his scandalous immorality, which, since he had been book-keeper at a factory at Raucourt, had again almost brought him into the dock at the assize court. Ducat indulged in Latin quotations, whereas Cabasse was scarcely able to read; but the one completed the other, and they formed together a pair of equivocal scoundrels, well calculated to inspire alarm.
The camp was already awakening, and Jean and Maurice conducted the Francs-tireurs to Captain Beaudoin, who took them to Colonel de Vineuil. The latter began to question them, but Sambuc, conscious of his importance, was absolutely bent on speaking to the general. In a bad humour at having to rise in the middle of the night, with another day of famine and fatigue before him, General Bourgain-Desfeuilles—who, having slept at the priest's, had just appeared on the parsonage threshold—received the three men in a furious fashion.
'Where have they come from? What do they want? Ah! so it's you, Francs-tireurs? Some more laggards, eh?'